I’ve decided to do something a sort of special event this week, partly because there’s a holiday this week. One of my favorite Pokemon types of all time is the Dragon type. So for this week I’m going to be doing a series of posts on Dragon Pokemon, and it’s all leading up to this week’s Legendary Pokemon of the Week posts, which is going to feature one of the first Legendary Dragon-type Pokemon. Now I won’t be covering all the Dragon Pokemon out there, just the ones that are part of a three-stage evolution line (I may need to save a few in case I decide to do this again). So to kick things off I’ll be covering the very first Dragon Pokemon in the franchise, Dratini, Dragonair, and Dragonite.
The Dragon-type certainly started from humble beginnings. Back in the days of Generation One, Dratini, Dragonair, and Dragonite were the only three legitimate dragons in the entire game. And there was only one Dragon-type move in the game too, Dragon Rage. For quite some time, due to its rarity and skittish nature, Dratini was thought to be only a myth, especially in the Kanto Region. Though they seem to be a little more common in regions like Johto and Unova, if you look in the right places that is.
Dragonite is the first pseudo-Legendary Pokemon in the game. In the past the only way to obtain a Dragonite was to evolve a Dratini, but in Black 2 and White 2 you can capture them in the wild. I don’t really think that’s right though. It’s more fun to raise one from a Dratini. Plus I’m sure a Dragonite raised from a Dratini is a lot stronger than one caught in the wild. Not to mention that a wild Dragonite is incredibly rare.
In the Games: In the Generation One games and their remakes, the only place to find and catch Dratini was by fishing in the Safari Zone. Dratini was certainly a frustrating Pokemon to go after in the Safari Zone in my experience. It’s much easier to catch a rare Pokemon like that when you can actually battle it and doesn’t run away. In Generation Two and their remakes, Dratini and Dragonair can be found in one of my favorite spots in Johto, the Dragon’s Den. Actually, in Crystal, HeartGold, and SoulSilver, you can obtain a special Dratini from the elder of the Dragon’s Den.
In Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, the only place to find Dratini, and I believe Dragonair as well, is to fish in a certain spot in Mt. Coronet. In Generation Five, you can find Dratini and Dragonair by fishing in the water outside the Dragonspiral Tower. In fact Dratini are very common there. I mentioned before that Dragonite can be found can be found in the wild in Black 2 and White 2. They’re in certain spots in the water outside Dragonspiral Tower and in the Hidden Hollows. But again, I prefer to just raise one from a Dratini. One more thing I should mention is that in Black 2 and White 2 you can obtain a shiny Dratini from the former Unova champion, Alder. But you first have to defeat Alder’s grandson, Benga.
Evolution: It takes a lot of time and training to get a Dratini to evolve, but it’s worth it in the end. Dratini does not evolve into Dragonair until level thirty. At which point it becomes larger and the fins on the sides of its head become wings. The anime showed once that Dragonair could use these wings to fly. Yet in the games they seem to do nothing. After much more training, Dragonair finally evolves into Dragonite at level fifty-five. After which it goes through a complete physical transformation and becomes more like a European dragon, and a very friendly-looking one at that.
The Giant: There’s a very haunting early episode of the Pokemon anime that I think I’ll always remember. In this episode, Ash and the gang wind up at the lighthouse of Bill, the guy who in the games developed the original Pokemon storage system used in Kanto and Johto. As the gang spends the night at the lighthouse, and Bill tells them of a giant Pokemon he discovered one night, an ancient creature that Bill thought was the last of its kind. That very night Bill played a recording over a sound system in the lighthouse, a recording that sounded like whale song. Then, out from the mists over the night ocean came a creature that resembled a giant dragon.
This creature was in silhouette, but its glowing yellow eyes could be seen. As Bill tried to befriend this giant dragon though, those idiots from Team Rocket scared it off by shooting missiles at it. The dragon retreated back into the night ocean, never to be seen again. There was a little confusion on my part after that episode. Back then I didn’t know as much about Pokemon as I do now, but I had seen pictures of Dragonite a few times before and they matched up with the creature. So I couldn’t really figure out why Bill thought that the giant one in the episode was the last of its kind. Then I found out that the average Dragonite is only six feet tall, the size of the average human. I thought that all Dragonite were the size of the one in that episode. So it appears that in prehistoric times, the Dragonite species was a race of giants, and they shrank down of the course of perhaps millions of years to adapt to an ever-changing world. Which mean that the Dragonite from that episode was the last of its breed, a primordial wonder that managed to survive for uncounted years in the depths of the ocean, all alone for untold eons.
That covers it for day one of Dragon Week. Tomorrow I’ll be skipping ahead a little and covering one of the Hoenn Regions great dragons. So until then, stay tuned.
